What the Collector Cannot Do

The morning after Juana’s family renewed sanctuary, Antonia set coffee beside my brother’s account book and asked whether I meant to read it all at once.

“I mean to find what he knew,” I said.

“That may take longer than one morning.”

“I have had less than a year to learn what he kept from me. I am making up for lost time.”

Antonia nodded and left the cup within reach. Juana sat at the far end of the table, hands folded over a shawl she had not needed indoors. She had come to listen, she said, though no one had asked her to. I could not blame her. Her name was in the Rider’s account now, and it seemed unfair that the rest of us should read about the matter without her.

Vincent opened the book carefully. He had learned to handle my brother’s papers as if they might bruise me. That was kind of him, and sometimes it made me want to snatch them away.

The pages were crowded with figures, names, and dates. My brother’s hand grew smaller when he tried to fit too much into a margin. He had copied passages from old family letters, marked the ages of relatives, and made lists of questions he had sent to churches and county offices. Beside some names he had written “paternal—no standing.” Josiah’s name was there, with his age and his address near Fort Garland.

“He knew Josiah could not be counted,” I said.

“He had taken the trouble to establish it,” Vincent replied. “That is different from hoping.”

I turned the page. My brother had written down what he understood of the bargain: one soul from the maternal line, when the last known issue reached twenty-one. Death before collection did not count. The debt passed onward.

The last sentence was underlined twice.

Juana read it over my shoulder. “So if I died tonight, it would still come to someone after me.”

I shut the book. It was the first thing I could do that did not feel useless.

“I am sorry,” I said.

She did not ask me to be. After a moment she said, “I would rather know the shape of it.”

That sounded like something I might have said, and I disliked the small kinship I felt. She had not asked to be in my family’s trouble. Neither had I, though I had been born into it.

Vincent found a loose sheet folded between two leaves. My brother had written his own conclusions there, with no attempt at neatness. He had found no clause for redemption in the copies or records he had gathered. He had also written that the collector’s record was not the original covenant.